15% of households don't have access to a decent broadband connection, with another 18% not having an internet connection at all (Image: Getty)

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If you live in a remote, rural area, you’ll be all too familiar with the challenges of getting a decent broadband connection.

According to Ofcom's Infrastructure Report, things are getting better, but we’re seeing the emergence of a huge gap between the maximum and minimum broadband download speeds.

Average download speeds are 23 megabits per second (Mbps), which is pretty speedy, but the figure is skewed by those who have super fast broadband of up to 350Mbps.

An unlucky 3% of households don’t even achieve basic broadband speeds of 2Mbps, which means it would take at least 18 hours to download an HD movie (of 15GB).

Some have speeds as low as 0.1Mbps - you might as well use snail mail at that speed. While others with fibre optic broadband and 4G are achieving super fast speeds.

Below-average broadband speeds

3

% of households that can't get 2Mbps

15

% of households that can't get 10Mbps

Ofcom

Around 15% of households aren't able to access download speeds of 10Mbps, which is seen as a standard requirement for a household. Without those sorts of speeds, you'll have a tough time streaming an HD movie or TV show via services like iPlayer, 4OD and Netflix.